the stars are aligned in our favor
wow, yesterday was a really good day for our apartment! my day inspired me to to update, but i forgot to before bed. and ryan had an especially good/fortuitous day too, i know. actually i haven't even talked with ted yet, though i saw his post. somehow everything yesterday went right...
well firstly the day before yesterday i found out that my research proposal with the neuroscience professor didn't win me a UVA research grant for next year. somewhat disappointing, but... i actually wasn't that sad, because i figured out that while the grant is relatively prestigious, it would only cover housing expenses. whereas if i do an REU with the cs department (and two professors have offered me such jobs), then i would probably make ~5000. which is way more than housing costs, and still doesn't look that bad on the resume. Also, the research both professors are doing is pretty hot and more relevant to what i want to do in grad school. so yay money and professors apparently liking me.
so i woke up at 8 yesterday to go to the uva surplus auction. early for me, but i hit my sleep cycle just right so it felt pretty good. anyways, basically every two months uva auctions off piles of crap that the school doesn't want anymore. we're talking everything from junky computers to couches to bikes to huge microscopes to cars. it's really sweet, and they have a guy doing the whole fast auctioneer patter thing, and there's all these random people bidding on random crap, god only knows what it does. it's definitely a should-be-experienced-once-in-a-life-time thing. i ended up buying a 15" HP LCD monitor for $60! it not the greatest, but i looke donline and they still retail for like $310, so it was a damn good deal.
oh that reminds me, i also bought an xbox on ebay to mod in an anindo-ish fashion to be my linux-running emulating/movie machine. someone already modded it and installed a hard drive too, so i paid about 1/2 the cost of buying all the components separately. the powersource or the bios is broken, but the first should be an easy fix and the second i was going to reflash anyway. hoorah for people selling things they could fix for $15 and a screwdriver...
so, money was spent, but in a awesome way!
then i had class, which involved a really good discussion. then erika and i finished our OS project, turned it in, and played crossword puzzles with dhruv. i feel like OS is going really well, because erika is a great partner, and the labs haven't been hard for us. yay cs major bonding time. then i went to neuroscience research, which also was really productive. then i came home and managed to finally fix ryan's computer! but then his windows product code wont work so we couldnt finish reinstalling it...wtf bill gates? still, a good day for computers. i felt up chris's laptop's ethernet port, but i don't think my magic touch will do much for that poor baby.
dive practice was better than usual, and in a slightly strange coincidence i made friends with ted's winter league ultimate captain, who it turns out used to coach diving. the weirder part of the coincidence is that they ran into each other when ted, she, and i were coincidentally all at the afc on monday, and so i heard this story from both of them, but i was there too and didnt know... i don't know if that made any sense, but it's weird. anyway. she's really cool and i hope she keeps coming to practice because she's really interpersonal and generates a lot more conversation between everyone.
finally i came home, ate dinner, cuddled with joe, and went to bed and got eight hours of sleep! what a sweet day.
upcoming i have a wushu tournament on march 11th at UMd! i'm really nervous about it since i'm competing a sword form i only have learned in the past month. pressure.... but i have all spring break to practice. also my spring break is next week, so if you too are home, give me a call and lets hang out sometime! peace
well firstly the day before yesterday i found out that my research proposal with the neuroscience professor didn't win me a UVA research grant for next year. somewhat disappointing, but... i actually wasn't that sad, because i figured out that while the grant is relatively prestigious, it would only cover housing expenses. whereas if i do an REU with the cs department (and two professors have offered me such jobs), then i would probably make ~5000. which is way more than housing costs, and still doesn't look that bad on the resume. Also, the research both professors are doing is pretty hot and more relevant to what i want to do in grad school. so yay money and professors apparently liking me.
so i woke up at 8 yesterday to go to the uva surplus auction. early for me, but i hit my sleep cycle just right so it felt pretty good. anyways, basically every two months uva auctions off piles of crap that the school doesn't want anymore. we're talking everything from junky computers to couches to bikes to huge microscopes to cars. it's really sweet, and they have a guy doing the whole fast auctioneer patter thing, and there's all these random people bidding on random crap, god only knows what it does. it's definitely a should-be-experienced-once-in-a-life-time thing. i ended up buying a 15" HP LCD monitor for $60! it not the greatest, but i looke donline and they still retail for like $310, so it was a damn good deal.
oh that reminds me, i also bought an xbox on ebay to mod in an anindo-ish fashion to be my linux-running emulating/movie machine. someone already modded it and installed a hard drive too, so i paid about 1/2 the cost of buying all the components separately. the powersource or the bios is broken, but the first should be an easy fix and the second i was going to reflash anyway. hoorah for people selling things they could fix for $15 and a screwdriver...
so, money was spent, but in a awesome way!
then i had class, which involved a really good discussion. then erika and i finished our OS project, turned it in, and played crossword puzzles with dhruv. i feel like OS is going really well, because erika is a great partner, and the labs haven't been hard for us. yay cs major bonding time. then i went to neuroscience research, which also was really productive. then i came home and managed to finally fix ryan's computer! but then his windows product code wont work so we couldnt finish reinstalling it...wtf bill gates? still, a good day for computers. i felt up chris's laptop's ethernet port, but i don't think my magic touch will do much for that poor baby.
dive practice was better than usual, and in a slightly strange coincidence i made friends with ted's winter league ultimate captain, who it turns out used to coach diving. the weirder part of the coincidence is that they ran into each other when ted, she, and i were coincidentally all at the afc on monday, and so i heard this story from both of them, but i was there too and didnt know... i don't know if that made any sense, but it's weird. anyway. she's really cool and i hope she keeps coming to practice because she's really interpersonal and generates a lot more conversation between everyone.
finally i came home, ate dinner, cuddled with joe, and went to bed and got eight hours of sleep! what a sweet day.
upcoming i have a wushu tournament on march 11th at UMd! i'm really nervous about it since i'm competing a sword form i only have learned in the past month. pressure.... but i have all spring break to practice. also my spring break is next week, so if you too are home, give me a call and lets hang out sometime! peace